Sebastien’s eyes gleamed.
“Like Dumpster diving?” he said. “We’re dressed for it.”
“Nothing so glamorous,” she said, her mouth crinkling in distaste. “Too bad. The garbage gets dumped every day. But since the building’s slated for demo and there’s no
Eugenie’s apartment windows were shuttered and silent. A striped tomcat slinking down the street was the only sign of life. Part of Aimee didn’t want to do this. Hated to do it.
She inhaled, taking a deep breath. The frigid air hit her lungs. She stifled a cough with her gloved hand and slipped her digicode enabler into the door’s keypad to unscramble the entry code. She hit a button and the bronze handled, hand-carved building door clicked open.
Once inside the foyer, she set down the leather bag she’d asked Sebastien to bring. He stuck a miniflashlight in his mouth and shone the beam, keeping his hands free. From inside, she handed him several pieces of felt, some Intermarche’ plastic shopping bags, and rubber bands. She wrapped the felt around her feet, pulled the bags over each foot, rolled rubber bands around her ankle to keep the bags up and indicated he do the same.
“An American technique?”
“It’s hi-tech all the way with me,” she said then climbed up the stairs. On the second-floor landing, she set down her bag. A bluish shaft of moonlight from the cracked skylight shone over their heads to the warped wood.
BERNARD SCROUNGED IN HIS suit jacket pockets. Pills. Where were those pills? The little blue ones. The ones that calmed him down, marshaled his words into succinct phrases.
The bottle was empty. He panicked. He’d already had the hunger strikers removed to the hospital. But after several hours they’d checked themselves out and returned to the church.
Bernard paced back and forth in front of his desk. Rays from his weak desk light pooled on his worn office carpet. What could he do with these people? How would he get Hamid out of the church?
Finally he found a broken blue pill in his pocket lining, chalky and only half a dose. He swallowed it, lint and all. Maybe it would help clarify his thoughts.
The captain of the
Bernard knew Hamid was too weak to conduct negotiations. And the buses bound for the air terminal were pulling up outside the church in Belleville. He remembered their rumbling engines. Like roars of hungry beasts waiting to be fed.
AFTER AIMEE’S REPEATED GENTLE coaxing, the cylinder lock opened. Relieved, she took a deep breath, then pulled out her Beretta. Breaking into a dead person’s apartment didn’t guarantee it was vacant.
Eugenie’s door creaked open. Aimee hoped the apartment would surrender the woman’s secrets. Brisk currents emanated from the windows, hung with tattered lace. Aimee motioned to Sebastien.
Alert for another presence, they padded into the apartment. Aimee almost tripped over a pile of building notices. Luckily Sebastien caught her arm. A musty odor trailed by faint whiffs of decay hit her.
The place had been trashed. By the look of things, this was definitely professional.
Aimee saw the detritus of the woman’s life in her ransacked apartment. It was as if Sylvie had been violated again, even in death. Aimee wanted to leave. But she had to put her feelings aside, get on with the job. Find something to point her toward the killer or killers whether it felt good or not.
She padded into the front room, its windows facing rue de Jean Moinon. A bottle of Evian water had fallen on the floor, its contents long evaporated.
The apartment reminded her of an old-fashioned waiting room in a doctor’s office—impersonal, bereft of life. She wondered why a well-off mistress of a minister would use this place. If Sylvie stayed here as Eugenie, there had to be a reason. And if the ransackers had found something, she wouldn’t have a clue.
Frustrated, Aimee scanned the rooms, but no answers came to her. Looking down from the window into the courtyard, she felt a strange sensation. She pulled her jumpsuit collar tighter around her neck.
Aimee unrolled more sheets of felt. She nodded to Sebastien and they tacked them up over the windows. Better than the flimsy blackout curtains provided during the war, her grandfather had told her, and the felt material kept the heat inside. Always keep some handy, he’d winked. You never know when you’ll need to make an unannounced visit.
Now she felt safer and took out her large flashlight. The period and layout of the apartment appeared identical to Madame Visse’s. However, in contrast with Madame Visse’s apartment cluttered with boxes, bright yellow walls, toys, and furniture, Eugenie’s was austere. Stark and deserted.
Several cracks in the plaster flaked onto the floor. She figured the nicotine-stained brown walls hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the 1930s or before. In the hallway faint pink rose-patterned wallpaper peeled in places. Former gas fixtures converted to electricity showed frayed wires. To her this didn’t seem like a love nest or rendezvous spot for a minister and his mistress.
Aimee nodded to Sebastien and pointed to the old workshop down in the courtyard. He’d agreed to search for the blue garbage bags if they were still there. He made an okay sign with his fingers, pulled out his tools, and padded downstairs.
Back out in the hallway, the air was stale and frigid. But her gloved hands, clammy and moist, and the perspiration sticking the jumpsuit to her neck, made her feel like she was in a steambath.
She shined her flashlight inside the narrow kitchen, with barely enough space for one person to stand and reach the drawers. A double gas ring cooker and scorched aluminum kettle were tossed on the floor. By the old enamel sink, an upside-down bottle of
Apprehensive, Aimee stared at the bare hallway, noticing that chunks of the plaster were gouged out, creating gaping holes in the faded wallpaper. Whoever had trashed this place was looking for something—blowing up Sylvie hadn’t been enough.
In the shadowy bedroom, a shredded black sleeping bag leaked feathers over the floor. An Ikea pine desk, the kind requiring self-assembly, had been pulled apart, one of the legs smashed and splintered against the wall. Below the window, she noticed a phone jack in the wall. She searched the room. No telephone.
She found it hard to imagine the woman hadn’t had a telephone.
Inside the bedroom closet was an orange crate filled with a pair of denim overalls, white shirt, and black sweater, turned inside out and ripped at the seams. A long black nylon raincoat hung from the only hanger, slit to ribbons. Aimee looked for a label.
None.
Curious, she edged further. Inside the cubicle-size bathroom was a shredded two-roll pack of Moltanel pink toilet paper. Pink tissue bits and cotton balls carpeted the stained tub. A large pump bottle of Sephora makeup remover, the expensive kind, had been emptied. The aluminum pipe under the sink had been removed, clumps of black hair and wet matter lay on the old tile floor.
Aimee went to the window overlooking the courtyard. From below, Sebastien flashed a thumbs-up at her, then left to fetch the van.
She turned, ready to untack the felt from the windows and leave, when something red by the empty coatrack
